Rise + Roam Bakery and Pizzeria — Restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea

Nice bakery with a nice selection of breads, pastries, and pizza as well as unique ice cream. Takeout is done over the phone there is no online ordering despite their web site. I've been there a few times in the past. I was a big fan of their pizza. However, I revisited Rise and Roam recently and I was very disappointed. About a year ago, I had the most wonderful pepperoni pizza there, so I figured I'd head over for takeout dinner. Unfortunately, something has changed since I was last there. I ordered a cheese pizza.

The bottom crust was not as good as I remember. It was not thin, but had the thickness of Mountain Mikes or Roundtable (mind you I don't eat at those places since I was a teenager). Also, like those establishment's: the tomato sauce was horrible. It was salty and way too acidic. It tasted like it came from a store-bought jar. (It is so easy to make a good pizza tomato sauce: Crushed Marzanos, +/- garlic, olive oil, and salt spread thinly that is how the great pizza makers do it, SIMPLE) Next, there was too much sauce and not enough cheese. The balance was off. The outside crust was good and I ate that but threw the main part of the pizza with the horrible sauce in the trash. The crust was great with olive oil and salt. However, I wanted Pizza. Still hungry, I ended up whipping up some Cacio de pepe at home for dinner. I also ordered the Caesar salad, which was just eh. Dressing was good with lots of anchovy flavor which I like, however not a big fan of coriander seed and caraway croutons. Also the croutons were huge and very hard. They also overwhelmed the salad. It was tons of croutons with a sprinkling of lettuce. I threw most of the croutons out.

I also got a Kouign-Amann. It was good on the outside , buttery and just the right amount of sweetness but when I took a big bite my taste buds were traumatized by a sour slightly sweet lemon filling that was in it. The filling overpowers the delicious pastry. Never had one with lemon filling, and it was not good. I just ate the outside (very good) and threw the inside filling and pastry it touched in the garbage.

Everything else in the shop looked really good. I think it is worth checking out for the baked goods but I'd steer clear of the cheese pizza, Caeser salad, and...

It was a terrible experience visiting this place for the first time.

We ordered one cheese pizza and one salad, and it took them almost one hour to serve our food.

After waiting 40 minutes, I went back inside to ask for my order. The staff was definitely not helpful or apologetic for the delay. They made it seem like it was our fault because we were there “during rush hour,” which, of course, didn’t make any sense since it was 1:25 p.m. on an slow Monday in Carmel.

The staff asked me if we wanted a pastry to make up for the delay, but it took another 20 minutes until we could see our food, totaling the mentioned close to 1-hour wait.

When the food finally arrived, the salad (that I said we were sharing) was served in a single bowl, and the pizza was just slightly better than a Red Baron frozen pizza.

If you decide to try this place, make sure you just go for their grab-n-go options to avoid disappointments. On top of that, on the day of my visit, I also noticed a fly on their muffins, and their restroom was missing maintenance, with the trash bin overloaded and the trash spilling out over the top and no paper towels, which for me are all signs of poor management and care about their customers and the service they provide.

Funny enough, the default minimum tip displayed on their POS is 18% which is completely not aligned with the service levels provided by...

I had pretty high expectations for the pizza here but I was quite underwhelmed. The Roam pizza I ordered was covered, in the driest, bitter, flavorless broccoli that I found myself trying to avoid every bite. It was also strangely cold when it got to me, even though it came out quite quickly. The sauce had potential but it was just spread way too thin. I can understand being conservative to give the crust room to rise, but this was such a stingy layer of sauce it was dry and flaking by the time I ate it. I definitely enjoyed the crust though, it had that perfect chewy bite and mildly charred flavor I really like in a pizza crust like this. Honestly I think my biggest mistake was ordering the Roam pizza instead of, say, the Tarte D'alsace. Having seen it on someone else's table, now there's a pizza that sounds (and looks) good. But to have the namesake pizza be this disappointing is kind of sad. The croissant was quite nice. It had an intensely rich flavor and a decent flakiness to the outside. Maybe a tad too greasy for my liking but hey, that's where the taste comes from. Unfortunately I had to go back and ask for it because the person I ordered it from forgot to bring it out. She was kind and apologetic though,...